


never was untrue

by Jagged



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Black Eagles route, Gen, Gender Issues, Gender-Locked Classes, POV Second Person, Trans Character, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:19:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22903852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jagged/pseuds/Jagged
Summary: You want to say: I don’t think I can go home. You cannot. The words don’t seem to be enough.(Or: Ingrid figures out it's not easy letting go of the person you were meant to be.)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 76





	never was untrue

You fall for the first time as winter begins its siege on the monastery grounds. The fields below stretch wheat-pale and slate-cold, etched with the darker lines of fences, the wandering roads. Cold wind slices at your face, whistles in your ears, digs under the plates of the armor they make you wear whenever away from the Academy proper, even for simple exercises such as this, and maybe this is the closest you’ve felt to home since you’ve arrived. Even that knot in the pit of your stomach, which could pass for hunger, is familiar. 

It happens so suddenly: the buck, the hitch, the heavy beat of wings no longer around but above you as the pegasus spills you over its back. 

Trying to understand this later, you could not tell how it comes to be. How you let go of neither stirrups nor reins and yet found yourself untethered, plunging through the air like a stone thrown down a well. Your patrol partner too far away to help, just you and the unforgiving sky, the Goddess’ placid eye, the ground rushing up to meet you. 

Nothing to break your fall but your body, your bones, and break they do.

*

 _You got lucky,_ Sylvain says when he visits you in the infirmary. He toes aside the pile of books Petra and Dimitri brought so you wouldn’t fall behind or go out of your mind without anything to do, sits at the edge of the bed, his collar loose, his jacket askew. Usually his nonchalance rattles in your teeth, but today you envy it. Manuela said it was a near thing that your ribs didn’t snap, that your lungs didn’t get speared through. You’re not to walk for another three weeks at least. 

_What happened_ , he asks, and you say _I don’t know_ , and he says, _You learned to fly almost at the same time you learned to walk, this isn’t like you._

You flinch. He’s concerned, you know this. He is a menace and a disaster and as much of a brother to you as the ones you left in Galatea, and just because you changed Houses and don’t see him every day anymore doesn’t mean that’s changed. 

But maybe you have.

*

Dorothea reads out your father’s latest letter to you, her legs folded under her as she sits at the foot of your bed. You never told him of your fall, but he asks if everything is going alright — in your last letter to him, he writes, you sounded glum. Your mother worries, and your brothers miss you. Here are the names of some suitors you might find agreeable. 

Writes: I hope you are well. 

At this time of the year the fields in Galatea must be mired in snow. You can picture the view from the windows, you remember the depths of winters past, the family gathered in the great hall where you keep the fire burning high as though to distract from the bare walls, the cold in the rest of the castle. Your brothers arm-wrestling at one end of the long table. Your father turning a fraction less tense as he looks up from his bookkeeping to watch your mother, ruddy-cheeked, her hair wild, back from training the knights. 

When you think of Glenn, which is often these days, and even more so in the quiet of the infirmary, you think: he would have been a lot like her. He never made you feel small, even though you were; he watched you fly, brought Felix down with him to find you in the stables during their visits. He had a warmth to him, something solid, a shield’s poplar core to Lord Rodrigue’s silvered edges, Felix’s blunt iron. 

_Ingrid?_

Your stomach lurches. You feel sick. 

_Ingrid. Stay with me. Breathe._

In and out, in and out, Dorothea rubbing circles on your back. It shocks you every time how soft her hands are, how free of calluses. 

You breathe. Her perfume today is subtle and sweet. 

I’m afraid, you want to say, but that’s not true. There’s not a word for when it feels like the world has fallen under you, or when the future hangs over you like a blade. In your bones you can feel it, in your prized blood, in the inevitable way that hail slices through the wings of winter-born foals and grounds them for life. 

You want to say: I don’t think I can go home. You cannot. The words don’t seem to be enough.

 _What’s wrong?_ Dorothea unfolds herself, resettles at your side. She is warm, and solid. When she raises her hand to your face the ring on her finger catches the light.

 _Please don’t say my name_ , you tell her, and you can see in her frown that she doesn’t quite understand. You do not, either.

But she says, _Okay_. The hem of her skirt brushes over your hand as she sets the letter to the side, resettles herself closer. From the pile of books at your bedside she draws the old beloved tales, Kyphon and Loog, knight and maiden and king.

 _Dorothea, do you think_ — You breathe. You put your hand on the cover of the books, a hair’s width from hers. You say: _I know these stories already._

Say: _Tell me about the ones_ you _like. Tell me about your operas._

*

You fall again in the Guardian Moon. Already from their stalls the pegasi tense at your approach, and you want to believe it is only because of the storm outside, the howling of the wind under the cathedral bridge. 

It’s not. 

Later in the professor’s office you wince, cupping your tea with scraped palms. They do not comment on it, but push the plate of pastries closer to your side of the table. A kindness.

 _Have you thought about picking up the axe_ , they ask, and you shake your head, _no. Should I?_

It is not favored in Faerghus: there the axe is a forester’s tool, or the headsman’s. It lacks the sword’s bright flourish, the reach of the lance. You have come around a different way of thinking after these few moons: in the Empire there is a tradition of halberdiers and battle-axes. But you always meant to be a knight. Winter taught you how to split a log, but in the training yard, on the battleground — in your hands the axe feels odd still, top-heavy and unbalanced, something missing from it. 

The professor nods, their eyes distant and strange. Says: _It is rarely easy to change_. _However necessary — it often feels like a loss_.

It is. It does. The last cake you pick from the plate is too sweet, but you finish it nevertheless. Sugar lingers like guilt on your tongue. 

*

You fall. Never from great heights, not since the first time, but only because now even the mare you helped raise from a foal will rear if you get too close to the saddle. You draft a hundred letters to your father. With both your feet on the ground you still remember the rush of the wind in your ears, your stomach like a knot, rising: you fall and fall again.

 _You’ve always been stubborn, but this is straight-up stupid_ , Felix says. His arms cross over his chest. _Even the animals can see this isn’t working. How much longer are you going to drag this charade out?_

You tell him _This isn’t just about me_ and he scoffs, says _Of course it is. What do you owe anyone else? What meaning does duty have, if it demands you swallow even this?_

When you close your hands and make fists there is a throb of pain under the raw skin. You look past him at the corner of blue sky beyond the buildings, the stable doors. 

_What sort of person would it make me to abandon everything, just to follow a selfish whim? It’s not about — owing, or stubbornness, or whatever you think it is. It’s not about me._

_Of course it’s about you, Ingrid._ His eyes glitter in the dark. You want to hit him. If you were someone else you would knock him down and open him up and see what it’s like being him: to wear his blinders so brazenly, to throw off the reins, to never dread an empty manger.

 _I may be a boy, or something like it_ , you tell him, and pause at voicing it: the shape of your dread crawling from your mouth, its barefaced truth. Felix watches you, waiting for the _but_. 

You think of Galatea’s storm-stripped and stony stoil, of your parents at home, their faces made lean by more than just worry and time. Felix knew himself very young. The things that concern Lord Rodrigue are different from those that worry at your father.

If you were someone else all of this would be so much easier. You’re not. There are rules carved in the marble of history, from which none can turn away. These things you were given and now must hold: your name, your Crest, your broken skin, your mending bones. What do your needs have to do with this? Above all things you are your father’s hope and heir. 

_It doesn’t matter what else I am_ , you explain to Felix, whose face twists. _I am, still, always, a daughter._

*

There’s steel enough in Edelgard’s spine to arm a country. You wonder, sometimes, how she manages to stand, and walk, and fight under the weight of it. Had it been you, you may have started falling much earlier. Perhaps the landing would have felt better, or perhaps you would have shattered entirely. 

Still. 

There is a gravity to her which you must grapple with. As the year approaches its end she starts to speak of reform often; some evenings in the dining hall find her head bent over the table, her plates pushed aside, and you know her to be drafting new edicts. She does not share them, yet, but at times you catch glimpses, impossible fragments: strength unbound from Crests, blood meaningless on its own.

Your father taught you: how to pare everything to its bare needs, its raw components. Your mother: how to guide yourself without a map, how to gut a deer. Not to keep more than needed, never to waste. 

Edelgard looks at you, blood on her face. The Flame Emperor’s crest of feathers, the setting sun frame her in summer-gold and red. At her side: the Professor. _Change_ , you remember them saying. In the encroaching dusk their eyes burn Faith-green and strange.

Once you heard Ferdinand say: there are places where for things to grow there must first be fires set. 

Now: your heart sits in your throat like you’re about to fall. In your belly: a deep longing for it.

*

In the monastery’s still-smoking ruin you make your way to the stables, the aviary. Doors and stalls open and burned, but you find her there still, coat darkened and eyes wild. Her wings fold at your approach, but you’re still you. The same voice, the same hands; she won’t let you on her back but she will follow you out of this husk of a building to the open sky.

Sentimental, perhaps useless. But you say _Go home, girl_ , you point her north. Your pegasi were never trained for return, but to stay on the battlefield. Still you dare, you hope —

In your head you are drafting letters still. _Mother_ , you think of writing: _I don’t think I’ll be home soon. Father, I think the world needs to change._

You haven’t decided yet. You are still only guessing at the shape of certain things. A different name; an emperor instead of a king. In time maybe you will allow yourself to think of you as your own being, feel your knowledge of it hollow your bones and once again take wing. In the spring Galatea for a few days crowns itself with flowers, welcomes the return of migratory birds. You dare to imagine it lasting longer: its soil scoured of old growth, ashes feeding the growing and the new; dream your fields blooming, plentiful and green. 

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on twitter @ jackaljag. title from susan elbe's _once not, now broken_ ("time made me soft around the edges, fog-throated, / an october patois, and though i betrayed you / i never was untrue")

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] never was untrue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26396545) by [LumehaPodfics (Lumeha)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumeha/pseuds/LumehaPodfics)




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